Devotion and the Promotion of Public Morality: Confraternities and Sodalities in Early Modern Ireland

106 Begadon

Chapter 5 Devotion and the Promotion of Public Morality: Confraternities and Sodalities in Early Modern Ireland

Cormac Begadon

The history of the Catholic Church in Ireland from the Reformation to the nineteenth century can be summed up as one of ‘endurance and emergence.’ Its fortunes were very much indicative of the tumultuous political and social climate that predominated throughout the 1600s, and the political thaw that ensued in the following century. While in other Catholic countries the Church was developing along Tridentine lines, the situation in Ireland did not allow for this. Curtailed by the absence of domestic seminaries, a paucity of well-trained clergy, as well as economic poverty, the prospect of implementing the Counter- Reformation in Ireland was a challenging task to say the least. The Church that subsequently evolved mirrored little the great Churches of the Continent. What came to exist was an impoverished institution whose capacity to provide pastoral care to the Catholic population was hampered severely. The desire of Tridentine reformers to locate religion within the physical confines of the par- ish church was simply not feasible in Ireland. There were difficulties introducing a parochially centered, clerically supervised, sacramental religion, resulting in the faith of many Catholics coming to exist in somewhat unorthodox forms, often not in line with the ‘reformed’ spirituality that the Counter-Reformation Church was advocating.1 Even though the Catholic Church in Ireland faced serious challenges, there were in certain areas, however, signs that it was attempting to provide pastoral care in new and innovative ways: one of the means through which reformers attempted to grapple with the pastoral situation was the confraternity. And while confraternities had existed in the pre-Reformation Church in Ireland, they came to be a vital tool in the armory of Catholic reformers in the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries. Confraternities in this period came to be, largely, an urban phenomenon, existing primarily in larger, wealthier towns and in cities, of which Dublin was by and far the most populous and wealthi- est. Dublin, therefore, came to be a vibrant center of Catholic culture; the

1 See Séan Connolly, Priests and People in Pre-Famine Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi 10.1163/9789004339521_007 Confraternities and Sodalities in Early Modern Ireland 107 spiritual needs of the city’s Catholics were catered to by a small but growing group of confraternities, complemented by an ever-expanding Catholic print industry.2 While urban Catholic religious culture in Ireland was beginning to shows some signs of evolving into a ‘Tridentine Church,’ the growing Catholic population presented reformers with considerable challenges. Large numbers of Catholics were migrating from rural areas into cities such as Dublin, swelling populations. Many of the new arrivals shared an unorthodox, even question- able, understanding of their faith, which allegedly fueled immorality. The lax morality of many came to be a serious cause of concern for reform-minded clergy and laity in the eighteenth century. When reformers decided to confront it head-on, they employed the services of confraternities and their members. By the end of the century, a mass program of poor relief and catechesis was being put in place in some dioceses, but especially in Dublin. Those who took up the mantle of reform came from a core of an intelligent, articulate, and active middle-class laity. While these lay elites eventually went on to found refuges, asylums, and schools, at a much earlier period they assumed central roles in confraternities, the subject of my inquiry here. Fusing the zeal of reform-minded laity and clergy, confraternities became a vital tool in the promotion of moral reform, works of grace, and personal piety. I demonstrate in this chapter that the public works of many confraternities complemented the increased emphasis on poor relief and apostolic care, while at the same time meeting the spiritual needs of its members. Members of confraternities were tasked with implementing a program of mass catechesis intended to turn the Catholic population into an educated, moral, practicing, and charitable multitude. The efforts of confraternities had a very real and decisive impact, creating a climate that was to bring more and more Catholics into the ‘sacramental fold.’ Often underestimated, and seen as catering to the spiritual desires of its members, confraternities, I argue, had a far greater impact on the wider society in Ireland than has been heretofore acknowledged.

Pre-Reformation Confraternities in Ireland

While the emphasis of this chapter is to illustrate the role played by confraternities in the post-Reformation period, it is useful to briefly acknowledge and

2 See Cormac Begadon, “Confraternities and the Renewal of Catholic Dublin, c. 1750–c. 1830,” in Confraternities and Sodalities in Ireland: Charity, Devotion and Sociability, ed. Colm Lennon (Dublin: Columba Press, 2012), 33–56.